


Dysphoria

by akitcougar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Metamorphmagus, Mirrors, dysphoria sucks, tonks is frustrated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-12 23:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12970305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akitcougar/pseuds/akitcougar
Summary: Tonks has a hard time recognizing herself in the mirror.





	Dysphoria

She stared at herself in the mirror, not recognizing the stranger staring back.

 _My nose isn’t usually this big… no not that small… that’s close but it’s the wrong_ shape _damn it._

She turned her nose into a horse’s, snorting a puff of air out to try and make herself feel better. It didn’t help. She changed to… someone’s nose. Not her own.

Mad-Eye would give her grief for obsessing over her appearance, but how could she not? She was _eighteen_ and had _no idea_ what she should look like, not when it was so bloody hard to make the same face twice. Even the still photos of herself, taken with a muggle camera she’d borrowed from Grandma Tonks, never looked like her, never matched up to what she saw in the mirror.

“Dora?” her mother’s worried voice called from the other side of her bedroom door.

“Wotcher, Mum,” she said, trying to hold back her worry and frustration and tie herself down to something but it was all just too much and she _still_ had no idea what she should look like and–

Mum could tell something was wrong. Mum always knew, when she started using her old greetings from childhood that she had to use just so Mum would know which kid was little Nymphadora on the playground.

Even her own mother never knew what she was supposed to look like.

Mum open the door and sat down next to her on the bed. “Do you want to talk about it, or do you want me to conjure up something you can burn?”

She sniffled. “It was… today was the first day of Concealment and Disguise.”

Mum’s face softened. “Oh, Dora,” she said, pulling her daughter into a hug.

She gripped onto Mum. “I don’t… I thought… I thought I left this all behind in school. I just… I want to look like _me_.”

“And you don’t know what that’s supposed to look like,” Mum said knowingly. Mum knew. Mum had taken the baby photos with the wizard camera, when the little tufts of baby hair shifted color with her mood.

“Why is it so hard? It’s never right, and I can’t _fix_ it.”

Mum sighed, saying nothing and just holding her close like she needed. When her sobs quieted down, Mum asked, “Would you like me to offer advice, or did you just need a shoulder, Dora?”

“Dunno,” she mumbled. “I think I just need some sleep.”

Mum gave one last squeeze. “Supper will be ready in an hour. Take however long you need.” Mum closed the door behind her.

She looked at her mirror again. She still didn’t recognize this face, the brown hair and the too-narrow nose and the frustrated red-ringed blue eyes and–

She punched the mirror. And then winced, shaking her hand out.

It wasn’t her face.

It never was.

**Author's Note:**

> It is 2 am and this plot bunny was not going to leave until I wrote it down. I got the idea from a reddit comment, about using "wotcher" in a fic as a way for Tonks to let other people know that it is her, and then it went into me writing about dysphoria. Or, at least, something close to how I've experienced dysphoria.
> 
> As an artist, I can tell you that human faces are hard to get right. You always notice if something is off because humans are really good at recognizing faces. I imagine Tonk's metamorphmagus abilities as something she has to practice to get anything close to the same face repeatedly.


End file.
